


The Last Green Field

by carolinecrane



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-06
Updated: 2012-05-06
Packaged: 2017-11-04 22:51:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/399079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carolinecrane/pseuds/carolinecrane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The letters had taken on a life of their own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Green Field

The letters had taken on a life of their own. He'd been turning them over and over in his hands since they wrapped up the case, scanning the words written in a neat, sloping cursive script as though the answer was going to jump out of the next page, or the next, or the next one after that. 

It felt...intrusive, reading words that were meant for someone else, but they were evidence now, and they'd passed through so many hands that it didn't really matter anymore. He'd read them himself at least a dozen times in the past few days, studied them so often that he could practically recite whole passages, but he still hadn't found a single answer. In the end they'd just been letters, and even though they knew what happened, they were never going to know why.

He didn't look up when he heard the door open. He didn't want to talk to whoever it was, didn't want to hear the lecture on wasting his time looking for evidence that wasn't there. They'd already given him that speech more times than he wanted to hear it – first Grissom, then Catherine, even Nick had gotten in on the act. And every word of it was true, but that didn't mean he wanted to hear it all over again. He didn't want them lecturing him, and he didn't want them thinking he couldn't handle it. He could – he just needed time to come to terms with the case on his own. 

He didn't look up when whoever-it-was pulled out the chair next to him and sat down, still didn't look up because if he pretended they weren't there they might take a hint for once and leave him alone. He rolled his eyes at himself as soon as he thought it, because he'd worked in the crime lab long enough to know that nobody ever minded their own business. It wasn't in their nature, just like it wasn't in their job description. So he wasn't surprised when a hand reached out to ease the letters out of his grip, and then he did look up to find Nick watching him.

Frowning at him was probably a better description, and Greg opened his mouth to cut off the lecture before it started. Only Nick didn't launch into a speech about how Greg needed to learn to let certain cases go – he didn't even say anything about the fact that Greg had helped himself to evidence after the case was closed. Instead he leafed through the letters, the edges of the Xeroxed pages already starting to fray a little. 

"You remember that case a couple years back? That whole family dead because the father was molesting his daughters."

"Yeah," Greg answered, because he couldn't remember the name of the guy, but he remembered the case. He remembered photographs of bloody handprints, remembered lifting blood off kids' clothes and thinking that was hard enough. But that had been nothing compared to this – to seeing it up close and personal, smelling death and trying not to close his eyes or throw up because he was supposed to be a professional.

Nick sighed, still staring at the letters in his hands as though he was looking just as hard as Greg for the answers hidden on the pages. "Sometimes it just doesn't make sense, G. Even when you know why."

He wanted to tell Nick that wasn't good enough. He wanted to ask why, how someone could snap and kill the people they were supposed to love and protect, but he knew Nick didn't have the answers. Nobody did, and that was what made these cases so hard for all of them. He'd seen the CSIs go through it over and over again, but this was the first time he'd had a front row seat, and no matter how hard he tried not to let it bother him, in the end he couldn't help it. 

"Does it ever get any easier?"

"They say when this job starts to get easy it's time to turn in your gun," Nick said, finally looking up from the letters long enough to smile at Greg. As soon as it surfaced his smile faded again, but it made Greg feel a little better anyway. "But yeah, it gets easier to live with it after awhile."

"It's not the case," Greg said, although that wasn't exactly true. He had a feeling Nick knew that, but he let it slide. "It's the not knowing, you know? I've read these things a hundred times and it still doesn't make sense. You'd think if somebody was going to go to all the trouble of leaving letters behind they'd say why."

Nick shrugged and tucked the letters carefully back into the envelope Greg had taken them out of. "Maybe she did. Maybe the people these were meant for understand. Or maybe she just couldn't put into words how she was feeling. When people get desperate they stop thinking straight."

He laughed at that, caught Nick's smile out of the corner of his eye and forced himself to look up. "So you got any estimates on how long it'll take to start getting used to this?"

Nick's smile brightened and he reached up, resting his hand on the back of Greg's neck. "It's different for everybody. Some people think it's easier if you leave work at work – if you're lucky I guess you go home to a family like Bobby or Catherine and forget this place for awhile."

"Yeah? You think that's true?"

"I wouldn't know," Nick said, his thumb moving in soothing circles against Greg's skin. "Why, you want to give it a try?"

For a second he looked almost nervous, like he really thought Greg was going to say that he wanted to leave work at work. "I like taking work home with me. I'm an overachiever." He grinned when Nick laughed, reaching up to tug the other man's hand away from his neck. "But I might be willing to give the family part a try, if you're offering."

Nick laughed at that, but it didn't quite chase the nervousness out of his eyes. "Kids are a pretty big commitment. You can't just give them back."

"No, I hear they let you try them out now," Greg answered, standing up to pull Nick out of his chair and toward the door. "Kind of like a test drive."

"What, like foster care?"

And he hadn't ever thought about it before, but he was starting to think Nick had. "Something you wanna tell me, Stokes?"

Nick shrugged, his ears turning a little pink and that was a dead giveaway. "Kids are pretty cool."

"So are dogs, but we don't have one of those."

"You want a dog?"

Greg laughed and shook his head, remembering the letters long enough to pick them up. He nodded in the direction of the evidence room, waving the envelope in Nick's direction. "As soon as I put these away we can go home and talk about it."

He wasn't sure if Nick had just been trying to cheer him up after his first really bad case, or if he really had been thinking about kids and the future and Greg all wrapped up in it. He didn't care, either, because Nick was thinking about him and the future now, and that was all that mattered.


End file.
